Suspended seats employing active suspension in vehicles increase driver comfort by dampening jolts felt by the driver along one or more axes as the vehicle travels. In so doing, active suspension seats have been known to provide health and safety benefits to drivers, including reduction in driver fatigue over long hours of vehicle operation. Such seats do this by isolating uncomfortable movement of the vehicle from the seat such that the seat is actively caused to move along one or more axes (usually, at least along the vertical axis) relative to the floor (or some other portion) of the vehicle.
However, the vast majority of vehicles currently in use and vehicles planned for production are not built with active suspension seats pre-installed by the vehicle manufacturer and are not built by the manufacturer with the intent to accommodate a later retrofit with active suspension seats. This can result in one or more structures within a vehicle not being made with sufficient strength and/or rigidity to properly accommodate the installation of an active suspension seat.
Currently available active suspension seats employ protective coverings for the base of such seats (i.e., portions between the seat cushions and the floor of a vehicle) that include a skirt having a flexible “bellows-type” structure (i.e., a skirt having “accordion-like” folding walls of flexible material) where the folds in the “bellows-type” structure allow the suspended portion of such seats to move (at least vertically) relative to the floor of the vehicle while covering components of the suspension of such seats to prevent dust, debris, hands and feet from entering into portions of the suspension. This is meant to ensure the proper functioning of the suspension and to prevent injury to those sitting on or beside such seats. Unfortunately, such flexible materials are subject to accelerated wear from the frequent and repeated flexing and bending at the folds caused by the movement of the suspended portion of such seats relative to the floor of the vehicle.